


a tokusatsu love song in g major

by chuchisushi



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: 5+1 Things, Alternate Universe - Superheroes/Superpowers, Banter, Canon-Typical Violence, Concept!Zenyatta briefly, Developing Relationship, Established Relationship, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Minor Jesse McCree/Hanzo Shimada, Non-Linear Narrative, Oni Genji Shimada, Sentai Genji Shimada, Unreliable Narrator, and at some point it grew a plot, into being serious before it looped back around into silly, philosophical naval gazing, this fic was originally an experiment to see how far i could push a silly concept
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-17
Updated: 2019-12-01
Packaged: 2021-02-08 03:08:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 15,009
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21469075
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chuchisushi/pseuds/chuchisushi
Summary: Snippets from a career of derring-do: Genji never expected a chance encounter with a strange omnic to grant him a power beyond normal limits; yet, who really is Zenyatta? Genji learns him over the years and, in doing so, finds that he can be a hero, too.Or: Five times Genji 'saves' Zenyatta, and one time Zenyatta saves him.
Relationships: Genji Shimada/Tekhartha Zenyatta
Comments: 6
Kudos: 51
Collections: Genyatta Big Bang 2019





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> written for the Genyatta 2019 Big Bang! i'll be posting a chapter every day or so until we get through all 5+1+epilogue, so watch this space
> 
> the utmost of thanks to our moderators, Wren and Beetleknee, for organizing this event and allowing such a talented collection of artists and writers the opportunity to work with each other!! it's been such a treat to see everyone excited about genyatta
> 
> and, of course, my most sincere gratitude to my artists: **shevaara**, **BillieMozzarella**, and **russet-red**, who have truly breathed color into the world of this fic. thank you _so_ much for your work! please be sure to check out their amazing art!!!
> 
> Links:  
shevaara on [twitter](https://twitter.com/Shevaara_/status/1197530873702338561?s=20) and [tumblr](https://shevaara-art.tumblr.com/post/189210104321/i-can-finally-share-my-contribution-for-the) (content from chapter 3)  
BillieMozzarella on [twitter](https://twitter.com/MotherMuchy/status/1197549282875736064?s=19) and [tumblr](https://muchymozzarella.tumblr.com/post/189211029079/for-the-genyattabigbang-d-a-tokusatsu-love-song) (content from chapter 4)  
russet-red on [twitter](https://twitter.com/raadst/status/1197899740001779712) (content from chapter 5)

Genji does not expect this.

He’d first spotted the omnic by the gleam of sunlight off of scratched metal when it had ducked into a narrow alleyway; it hadn’t been until the small cadre of skulking, following figures had turned into the alley too that Genji had found himself in motion.

Genji had expected violence. Anti-omnic sentiment still ran rampant in contemporary culture; fear and contempt still colored public policy. Genji expects violence because it’s five people following one omnic into a dark, dirty, little alleyway, and before he knows it he’s standing just far enough in the space to not be seen from the street.

(He can’t even really say _why_ he goes – only that his feet move.)

Genji stops, shrugs his duffle off his shoulder to dangle it casually from one hand. “Hey,” he says mildly, and the five men that had been making some decidedly aggressive motions at the omnic startle like cats and whip around to face him.

The omnic meets his eyes.

Genji is expecting violence. What he gets instead is the omnic saying, “Oh, _him_? Truly?” in a surprisingly deep voice, and the alley, men, and omnic all disappearing in a burst of gold-green light.

Genji stands in a void, as tense as a wire, and barely has enough time to start, “What –” before he finds he is not alone.

“Well,” the omnic says (and this one is a different model, something built in squarer lines with a diamond of sensors flaring gold upon its – his – brow), “You are not unskilled, but you certainly are an unusual choice. Still, the Iris would not select a champion unsuited for the role.” A pause, and then the omnic adds, more gently, “You have potential. And you know the shape of power already. That, at least, is the restoration of a balance set askew. Be welcome to this strength once more.”

Genji does not have time to act: the figure disappears as though it had never been and in his place emerald scales and gold-white lights flicker and writhe, meld into a shape that Genji recognizes in the aching hollows of his bones. The dragon that coils about him rainwater-cool and damp-scaled is a form he knows.

He reaches out his hands; and the beast surges into his embrace; and Genji never feels an impact – he feels only, instead, the sensation of power settling underneath his skin in a familiar hum warmer than before.

It is something he had thought lost forever.

He comes to himself standing lock-kneed in the alley, and his legs nearly buckle underneath him for how the weight of the spirit in his bones follows him out into the waking world.

It is not a dream. It is, this time, impossibly, not a dream. He could cry for it, because he had thought, between the accident and his family disowning him, that he would never have this again, this power that had been a companion all his early, foolish years.

“That is… not what I would have expected of you, considering your appearance, but it is certainly _heroic_,” someone says, and it’s Genji’s turn to startle.

He jerks his head up, and the motion feels _almost_ the same, the flutter of the sensory banner on his helm, the weight of his faceplates: but it is not _quite_ so, and Genji looks down at himself for it and then yelps and nearly jumps out of his skin.

“What am I _wearing_?!” he blurts, frantically checking himself over; gone are the hoodie and jeans he’d had on over his prosthetics, cloth replaced instead with green armor and skin tight leggings and a _scarf…_ Genji tentatively pats at his head and finds another helmet, this time full-faced and with two horns that sweep back from the forehead. “Why am I dressed like a Kamen Rider??”

“It’s what you find ‘heroic.’ Or superhuman – but I suppose, all things considered, you’re used to the latter already, hmm?”

Genji looks up and this time properly meets the gaze of the omnic that he had followed in from the street in pursuit of –

“Ah! Those thugs!”

“Oh, don’t worry. I’ve heard the first transformation can be quite disorienting for some, so I took care of them already.”

The omnic waves one hand in a gently dismissive, reassuring manner, and Genji double-takes when he realizes all five thugs have, indeed, been taken care of, arranged groaning and restrained along one wall of the alleyway. The omnic, their target, is not any (further) scratched in the slightest for his apparent effort.

“I… have a lot of questions,” Genji says weakly.

“I imagined you would. Shall we adjourn somewhere more atmospheric for an explanation?”

“Dressed like this?!”

The omnic, despite having a static faceplate, somehow manages to tilt his head in such a way that it conveys a rather gimlet stare. Genji feels himself flush at the look and is immediately thankful for the full-face helm. “Do you think the city has not seen stranger?” the omnic asks, and Genji has to concede the point.

He sighs and then steps to one side, making a gallant little gesture towards the mouth of the alley with his free hand. “Then, after you.”


	2. Chapter 2

Genji refuses to call what he’s doing anything _but_ skulking.

Heroes, apparently, aren’t supposed to skulk. Champions of supernatural, semi-divine powers-that-be are _especially_ not supposed to skulk. Genji, dressed in green and white, with his scarf and his helmet’s distinctive horns, is _determinedly_ skulking.

If the Iris didn’t want him to be true to his nature, then it shouldn’t have chosen as a champion the disgraced heir to a crime family whose legacy included the ninja arts.

His dragon does not hold the same sentiment. She has manifested in a smaller form, restricted to it by Genji’s will (and he is gratified that his training still holds, that the bond they share of blood and mutual respect still rings true), and she is coiled tangled up in his scarf for it, making her impatience known with the occasional scrabble of claws against his armor. Were he younger, he would have sympathized emphatically, eager. Now…

“Patience, please.” Genji reaches up to scratch her gently under the chin with one hand, using the other to lift a set of binoculars to his eyes, sighting on the apartment building he’s surveying. “I am not invincible, despite this strength. And he is too valuable to risk with danger caused by my overeager enthusiasm.”

‘Valuable’ is putting it perhaps too lightly. The omnic’s name is Tekhartha Zenyatta, a ‘humble disciple of the Iris,’ he had said with a bow before they had seated themselves on the outdoor patio of a little cafe that had had flowerpots in the windows. A sleek black cat, obviously familiar with the omnic, had jumped into Zenyatta’s lap after a few moments, arranged itself, and then made a noise reminiscent of a screaming door hinge, demanding pats. Zenyatta had obliged, and the cat’s purring had been audible to Genji across the table. The server’s smile hadn’t faltered at all despite how Genji had been dressed when she’d come to pass out menus.

“The usual for you, Zenyatta?” she’d asked, and the omnic had laughed and replied, “Yes, I believe that will do quite well. And how have you been, Paula? How is your tomato crop this year?”

Genji watched the two talk, glancing between the menu and the figures, curious about this omnic that seemed to be so familiar with this quiet, quaint place. When the server leaves, Genji asks, “You come here often?”

“Parsnip misses me, and she is a demanding mistress,” the other replies, patting the cat in his lap. “No doubt you have questions.”

“Just a few,” Genji quips back, then sits forward in his chair. “What happened?”

“You went after a person you felt was in danger, and you received power in exchange for your valor,” Zenyatta replies, to which Genji makes a scoffing noise.

“Such exchanges are never free. And it is far too convenient for such a straightforward acquisition of power to occur as a result of a ‘good deed,’ especially one left incomplete.”

The omnic makes a humming noise. “Well, it is so. I cannot deny this. Very well.

“I am a disciple of the Iris, as I have stated. It is a force that exists beyond our world, though it often interacts with ours. It has limited direct influence upon us as it is, but it has individuals that may act in its stead – I am one of them.

“I act as something of a direct voice of it. You have been chosen as something like a champion of me, and thus the Iris by proxy. It feels as though you have qualities that would complement me, and that you would represent it well in its desires.”

“It’s… sentient? What does it want?”

“Not as such. There are forces of destruction in the world, that seek to end its existence prematurely. All of this _will_ one day cease, in accordance with the laws of the universe, but not yet. Not just yet. It seeks to prevent that premature finale, as a general rule. It also is not opposed to acts of kindness, most of the time.”

Genji huffs out a breath. “And what makes the Iris believe that I would make a good champion? Why do _you_ believe that I would be a good champion for you? You know nothing of me.”

“If the Iris chose you, then it has determined that you are suitable. I have faith in it for that, and I have observed little so far to dispute the validity of its choice. And as for your compatibility with me… well. You know nothing of me, either, yet you were willing to risk yourself for my safety. I, a stranger, against five individuals intent upon harming me. I am unfamiliar, and you have no stake in my life, and yet. Here you are. That is enough for me.”

Genji scowls behind his helmet. “You are too trusting.”

Zenyatta laughs. “Perhaps! But I yet have cause to regret it, so I will continue as I have.”

There is a pause when the server returns. Genji orders a small cup of green tea and a set of carbon wafers. Zenyatta wraps his hands around the large mug of bio-synth oil that had been set before him, then takes them off to gently nudge the cat in his lap away from it by virtue of capturing her around the ribs.

“So, in the alley,” Genji starts, “when our eyes met – I was someplace _else_ for a while?”

“A liminal space – halfway between here and where the Iris resides.”

“The spirit world.”

“If you’d like.”

“It must be – or something like it. My dragon – she would not have come from anywhere else. It is not within her nature. And I _know_ it is her.” Zenyatta has moved on to gently squishing the cat’s paws, which it seems to be tolerating with grace. “It should be impossible. I am no longer of the Shimada, and the dragons are of the family. I should not have her just because I have been chosen as a champion of an omnic and some extra-planar force.”

“And why not?”

“Because the Shimada _disowned_ me,” and for a heartbeat Genji’s temper flares scarlet-bright behind his eyes for remembrance of the hurt. It makes him spit his next words: “I am no longer _of_ the family, and the _power_ meant for members of it should not be accessible to me for my expulsion.”

There is a pause, during which Zenyatta seems to look Genji up and down. Then he asks, “Do you know what your dragon is?”

Genji falters. “It’s – she’s a gift. Power and strength passed on in the Shimada line, granted to us from birth. Comrade and constant companion.”

“Yes. A beloved being indeed. And the Iris desires to set things as they should be. It exists outside of us in the realm that your dragon inhabits. It contains multitudes. Did you believe she missed you at her side?” Zenyatta waits for Genji’s slow nod. “Is it so strange then to think that it had a hand in reuniting such bond companions?”

Something like indignation sparks in Genji. “And why would I not think it strange? I know nothing of your Iris, _certainly_ did not wake up this morning expecting to be chosen as a _champion_ of it – it is ridiculous to assume that I would be alright with a choice that I had no input or say in!”

For a moment the words taste too-familiar on his tongue. After the accident, how could he have chosen to let himself die? How could he have _not_ chosen to live, even when to do so meant existing as something caught between man and machine, even when it meant the loss of the being that had been as a constant throughout his childhood, even when it had meant that he would have to be _alone_, truly alone for the first time in his life?

How could he have done anything but make a choice that was not a choice? Even when it meant being parted, if it would ensure he would survive?

“And, now,” Genji finds himself saying, “Now that the deed is done, how can you expect me to not be obligated, _bound_, to this life of service? My dragon means… much to me. To lose her again – how can _you_ be satisfied with such _justice_ done in the name of the power you serve?”

The rattle of claws and the clip of teeth bring Genji out of his thoughts. He shakes himself, and his dragon chitters reprimandingly at him, releases his index finger from her jaws; then she winds her way back up his arm, his shoulder, places her paws on the black glossiness of his visor, and presses her snout to it as well.

“Whoops. Yes, I’m here. Earth to Genji, the spirits are calling.” Genji reaches up and gently tugs at her mane. “Sorry. Lost in thought – what did I miss?”

His spirit, in answer, huffs at him, nips ungently at the hand that had touched her, and points her snout out at the apartment building. Genji hastily raises his binoculars again, panic flaring in his chest – had Zenyatta been hurt? What had changed? – only to see that the kidnappers haven’t moved, that all is quiet, and that there is a _somehow_ very familiar gleam of sunlight off of scratched metal on the roof of the complex.

Genji huffs out an almost disbelieving laugh. Of _course_.

“Looking for a ride?” Genji quips from the edge of the air conditioning unit he’d perched himself on. Zenyatta, peering out towards the neighboring roofs with one hand shading his optics, doesn’t quite startle in surprise – he lights up instead, as though Genji had spoken good news, and turns towards the other, looking up at him.

“Hello, Green Sentai,” he calls out cheerily. Genji snorts behind his helmet. “It’s good to see a friendly face. I certainly wouldn’t be opposed to being lent a hand – like a cat, I seem to have climbed too high and paid for my hubris.” The omnic tilts his head, and the motion seems to convey a wicked little smile. “Luckily for me, there seems to be a kind hero close by who is willing to help.”

“Now, now, let’s not get too hasty here. I never said I was the type of hero to rescue cats from trees,” Genji replies.

“Oh?”

“That’s right. Felines aren’t exactly my forte.” Genji stands and then steps off of the unit, letting himself drop to the roof. He matches Zenyatta’s grin, mirrors it in the tilt of his own head. “But unruly omnics who get themselves into sticky situations – especially omnic monks that are disciples of the Iris? Now, that’s a little more familiar.”

“Well,” Zenyatta replies. “If it’s too much trouble, I can certainly make my own way.”

“Haven’t you already?” Genji comes to a stop before the other. “Did you slip the sentry or did you sweet talk yourself free?”

“Now, now,” Zenyatta says in an echo of Genji’s earlier words, mischievousness coloring his synthetic voice, “let a humble monk have his secrets, hmm?”

Genji laughs. How can he not?

“Very well, milord!” He drops to one knee and opens his arms. “Here is your noble steed. Shall we away?”

Zenyatta answers, as he steps into the circle of Genji’s embrace, lets himself be swept off his feet, “Yes.” And then, more seriously, softly, but just as warmly:

“Thank you, Genji. One could not ask for a better lionheart.”


	3. Chapter 3

Genji’s words fall into the silence between them. Across the cafe table, Zenyatta has stilled, motionless as only a machine can be as he watches Genji, takes him in. Genji does not know what he is looking for. He tells himself he does not care, bitter with it, with this debt of gratitude that had been placed upon him.

“Nevermind,” Genji says, and he can’t keep the resignation, the flatness out of his tone. “It doesn’t really matter. I’ll serve you in exchange for her.”

Zenyatta is silent a moment more. Then he says, “Did your family think you too naive of the ways of the world?”

Genji’s head snaps up. He stares at the other, speechless at this apparent nonsequiter. Unbidden, a memory rises – Hanzo’s face, cold and closed off at his hospital bedside, telling Genji through a painkiller haze that he had deserved what had happened to him. That he was a disgrace – a coddled second son and a shame to the Shimada line.

“It is not a bad thing, this so-called naivety. When one walks the world and sees the myriad of ways in which people are cruel and uncaring, when one sees what history and perception have wrought, when one sees the little, small evils that persist… when one knows the injustice of life and yet is still able to speak of things like fairness… do you not think that strength? To defy what is cruelly forced upon those undeserving?”

Genji finds his voice, but it comes out an echo of words he had heard from his elders all his life: “It is foolishness to deny reality.”

“Is it? But is reality not merely the reflection of our words and deeds?” Zenyatta raises his chin, his optics flaring blue in the sunlight. “Is it foolishness to see the way people are hurt and to stand and say, ‘_No_’ in the face of it?

“Too often are the words ‘this is just the way things are’ used as an excuse for cynicism. For a lack of action. Why should we strive for anything else, if that is the way things are? Why should we do anything but survive in the face of what seeks to claim us, to own us, to use us?”

“Nothing lies down that path but danger. You will destroy yourself.”

“Perhaps. Perhaps so. But if it happens, I know that it will have been done on my own terms. In my own fashion, in accordance with what I believe in, trying to bring a world into being that is, in some little way, better than before. Perhaps that _is_ foolishness. But it is my conviction. I would rather die unfettered than live so bound.”

“You are only one being. What can you do? You are just one omnic, against the world.”

“I do not know. But,” and here Zenyatta straightens, squares his shoulders, firm, “I will not know the change I can cause in the world until I try.”

In that single, charged moment, [Genji could swear that he sees a flicker of gold](https://twitter.com/Shevaara_/status/1197530873702338561?s=20), senses the echo of a heavy aura that hums holy like temple bells against his senses. In the hollows of his bones, his dragon stirs.

Then the server bustles out with Genji’s order, setting first cup, then saucer down with a cheerful, “Here we are! Do you two need anything else?” and like that, the moment is gone.

Genji thanks her automatically. Zenyatta begins petting the cat in his lap again. When Paula leaves, Genji eyes the other across the table, and then sighs.

“So how long am I going to be dressed like this? Is there a time limit?” Genji asks, gesturing at himself with one gloved hand. Zenyatta says, “_Ah_,” very quietly, as though he had forgotten, and then makes a motion himself, miming taking a helmet off.

“Imagine yourself putting down your blade or shield when doing so,” he instructs. “That’s the way it should work for you.”

Genji takes ahold of his helmet and imagines the end of kendo practice, the salutes made, the masks and the swords being lowered, the good-natured jostling and ribbing as armor was loosed to let air flow, and the helm comes off of his head easily. He holds it, and he does not _feel_ any different, but his hands are now ungloved. The breeze ruffles what there is of his short hair. He looks down into the black visor of the sentai helmet in his hands and feels something like a bittersweet ache in his chest for what had been.

“You are right, however,” Zenyatta says, and Genji looks up at that, at the other. “The idea of binding anyone to me by the act of a debt, by the threat of the loss of something precious, does not sit well with me.”

He leans forward to take a sip of the bio-oil in his cup, ceramic meeting metal with a faint but distinct _clink_ that Genji can hear where he sits. “After all, I know something of that, too. The position of champion is one taken and retained willingly. I would not presume to believe that I have any sway over you, strangers that we are to each other. The Iris seeks to restore balance in the world, amend efforts made to disrupt it. If it saw fit to restore your dragon to you, then it is not within its nature to take it away again.”

“That is hardly a fair exchange,” Genji returns.

“Fair enough, in my eyes. I do not want an unwilling champion, as you so rightly deduced. Thus it is more than a fair enough exchange to give you the liberty of _choice_.”

Genji has nothing to say in reply to that. He picks up his teacup instead, inhales the scent of the matcha as he sits back, watches Zenyatta scratch Parsnip under the chin. The silence is not uncomfortable, somehow.

“What will you do? If you do not have a champion?” he asks eventually.

Zenyatta’s shrug is careless. “The same as I always have. I have spent years without a second. And I am not incapable. I will not come to harm because of your absence, do not fear.”

Genji thinks of five thugs and a dark alleyway and retorts, “Because you have done so well on your own to stay free of trouble.”

“Did I not handle myself well?” Zenyatta returns. “I will be fine.”

Genji thinks about the conviction he had heard in the other’s earlier words. He thinks of how omnics had been property, had been things built to be used and discarded, about the efforts that had been made to equalize them as sentient beings with their own hopes and dreams and rights. He thinks about the carbon wafers sitting on the little plate before him, and of the silicon that had been fused into his soul in replacement for the flesh he had lost. Thinks of the pity in the eyes of others when they realize that he is both man and machine. Thinks of the blurred breadth of his brother’s shoulders as he’d walked away from that hospital bed without looking back.

“You said,” Genji says, slowly, “that the reason I ended up dressed like a sentai when I was chosen… that was because that was something that embodied heroism for me?”

“That is correct.”

“And the reason the Iris chose me in the first place – because it thought I could be a hero?”

“Because it _knew_ you could be a hero. That you could do good. Yes.”

Genji looks down at the helmet in his lap and remembers cheery theme music and corny explosions, monsters of the week dressed up in rubber suits facing off against a colorful squadron matching in themed gear. Remembers how the heroes would always win, no matter the odds. Remembers he and Hanzo, so long ago, running through the Shimada complex, climbing roofs and trees and using the skills they had learned (all unknowing then of _why_) to reenact their favorite scenes, swapping off kaiju and sentai after every victory.

“I need to think about it,” Genji says, and Zenyatta is gracious enough to not call him out for the lie.

“Sergeant,” Genji says as he drops to sit atop the patrol car he’d landed on.

“Sentai,” McCree grunts, not looking away from the bank the squad has cordoned off with caution tape and blue lights. “Surprised t’see y’here. Usually only catch y’n action. Savin’ th’day n’all.”

“Multiple hostage situations aren’t exactly my forte,” Genji replies easily, ignoring the dig. The city doesn’t have the kindest view on vigilantism, but it had its pragmatism: there were things that only those unaffiliated with the law could handle. And individuals like the Green Sentai – with his sparkling charm and his acrobatics and his distinctive outfit – were media darlings that they couldn’t afford to not tolerate, for how the public could turn against anyone who cracked down on their presence. “This one is better left to the professionals. I’m just here in case something else shows. Today, I’m your backup.”

He sketches a bow even seated that McCree thoroughly ignores. Genji grins briefly behind his visor at Jesse’s studied indifference, but the smile is quick and fades even faster. “How are negotiations going?”

“Contact’s been established. It’s an amateur for sure. Real clear demands – twenty mil by noon, else he starts shootin’.” Jesse shifts his weight from one foot to another. “Real desperate, too. Not a good sign.”

Genji is careful to keep his spine relaxed, but he clenches his hands into fists where they’re laid on the roof of the police car. “Your people are trying to talk them down?”

“’Course they are. Slow goin’. Keeps sayin’ if he doesn’t get th’money, th’Shimada are gonna send a blade after him.” Jesse takes a pull off of the cigarette dangling from his mouth. “Damn Shimada. Family’s all but gutted n’it’s still givin’ us grief. Think we’ve cleaned house n’there’s still more heads.”

Genji keeps the venom out of his voice, but he cannot help but quip, “That’s often the way hydra are.”

Jesse does turn his head at that to look up at Genji properly. “Uh-huh.” Stares at him. “You got a stake ‘n this, Sentai?” he asks, and Genji mentally curses the man’s keen eye. There was a reason he was a detective, after all.

“Just my duty as a citizen to the people,” he lies, and Jesse’s eyes narrow. Genji can see him contemplate how best to press – to learn more about this mysterious masked force that sometimes crossed his path – but he is (thankfully) distracted by a sudden bustle of movement across the whole encampment. Genji hears, _Look, the door_, the clicks of multiple weapons being readied, sits up himself and sights over the fleet of cars and police to watch as the front doors of the bank are shoved open to release a metallic figure.

The voice of Captain Reyes cracks out across the assembly – _“Hold!_” – even as another figure breaks from the front line to go to the omnic, picking them up. The comms team, huddled around a pile of electrical equipment, bursts into soft chatter as something evidently comes through, murmurs of ‘a show of faith’ filtering out even as Genji stands to track Commander Morrison’s wake.

He ends up near the medics and waiting ambulances, seated atop another patrol car a discreet distance away as he waits for the meditech and the police to do what they can. The omnic is a teller at the bank, a GU57-0113 model, civilian. Young, by omnic standards, liberated just a year prior. She can’t help but cry, too terrified, but she tries her best to answer the Commander’s questions around the gravely pops of feedback her overworked voicebox is producing, her speech protocols affected by her systems trying to compensate for the new stimuli, the fading danger, and the emotions associated. Not so different from humans, in this.

When Morrison leaves, she sees him, and she sits up, almost shaking off the meditech’s hands in her single-mindedness, whatever action she needs to take apparently having been assigned high priority in her systems. Genji meets her before she can go too far, sliding off of the car and into motion, and she grabs at his upper arms to steady herself when she nearly stumbles, her functions all in a disarray from the hostage situation.

“He wanted me to say,” she tells him, swaying, “that he is still whole. He is doing what he can. The man is good at heart – but scared. So scared. Lost. And if you were out here, that you should wait if you could.”

Genji breathes out. He bows his head. “Thank you,” he says to her, and her optics flare briefly brighter in reply before she is turning away, letting herself be guided to a waiting ambulance. Genji stands and watches them drive off before he turns back towards the bank, the police, to where Zenyatta is being held hostage with multiple others by a man demanding twenty million to pay off a ghost of a family that refuses to bow, that refuses to die, that lives in Genji’s blood and bones and blades for what they had trained their children to be.

Genji turns away. Zenyatta had asked him to wait. And, in the end, despite how they had met as strangers all those weeks and months ago, Genji trusts Zenyatta. He knows how powerful the other’s words can be.

The hostages are released. One by one, the tellers, the patrons, the omnics, the humans. All of them, save Tekhartha Zenyatta, and Genji sits seiza on the roof of Jesse’s patrol car with his hands closed atop his knees and waits. He does not tire from the position, for what flesh and bone he’d lost. Fleetingly, Genji is thankful for what had been done.

Jesse casts him looks from out of the corner of his eye every time another figure stumbles through the bank’s doors. Genji waits, because the patience of the stakeout was another thing that had been taught to a younger him, and his dragon thrums and flexes underneath his skin, waiting as well.

It takes hours, in the end. “Will he be safe from the Shimada in your custody?” Genji asks Jesse, once.

Jesse replies, “As safe as anyone could be, behind bars.”

It’s not a guarantee. They both know it. Jesse refuses to promise what he cannot provide, too-honest for his own good. Genji can understand the sentiment. When the bank doors open for the last time, a hush of anticipation falls over the assembled. Genji raises his head and looks for the gleam of sunlight off of scratched metal.

The shot, when it comes, is silent.

One moment the bank robber is stepping between the doors, emerging from the gloom inside the building; the next he is reeling back, clumsy, with a shaft of metal protruding from the base of his neck. Genji sees it and finds himself turning automatically in response, because he _knows_ this, _knows_ that arrow, and _knows_ that this was not what had been intended, the situation complicated by an unknown third party; and he finds himself meeting the gaze of an azure demon’s mask, black and blue and gunmetal white perched atop a rooftop across the way.

The moment stretches, suspended, the clamor of the police reacting distant and unimportant, because Genji _knows_ that mask, _knows_ those clothes, _knows the man beneath them_, the man that already has a second, different arrow nocked, his bow raised, and _Zenyatta is still with the target – _

The man staggers, and then the sound of the shot follows; Genji whips to the source of the noise and finds Captain Amari half-hung out of a window in a building nearby, her rifle rock steady in her hands and her finger still on the trigger. The man on the roof moves in time to avoid the second shot, launches the arrow in return, and then flees under the cover of the resulting clamor as the shaft and head of the projectile fragment into handfuls of individual, bouncing shrapnel upon impact. Genji is moving, too, but he is too far away, and the masked man is nowhere to be found by the time he reaches the roof that he had been standing on. There are no traces of his presence – not even blood.

Genji breathes out.

The bank robber is still alive, if being very quickly bustled into another ambulance, this one with an armed escort. The remaining medics and meditechs are busy treating the small wounds inflicted by the scatter arrow; Amari and Reyes are coordinating the response teams and wrapup from the center of the milling police. Genji finds McCree and Zenyatta seated on a bumper of an ambulance, a meditech running diagnostics on the omnic, and the first thing Genji says when he stops before them is, “You pulled him.”

“I saw a glint. The arrowhead. My optics adjusted to the light outside quickly enough for that, at least,” Zenyatta replies evenly. The meditech’s handheld chirps in a positive manner, proclaiming Zenyatta as unharmed. “Though I was not fast enough to prevent him from being hurt.”

“You did enough. That arrow would have buried itself in that man’s eye otherwise,” Genji replies. “You saved his life.”

Zenyatta tips his head in acknowledgment. “I will need to stay for testimony,” he says.

“Don’t go back to the temple tonight. It’s not safe for you to be rattling around in those halls so soon,” Genji tells him. “You talked him down?” It’s not a question. Not really. Genji already knows.

“He was scared. Did not know what else to do. It was a plot born of desperation, not malice. He spent the money on his daughter’s care. He couldn’t pay it back. He didn’t want to hurt anyone.”

“I’ll put the family under guard,” Jesse says, groans as he hauls himself off of the bumper. “Sentai, y’better get movin’ afore th’paps get past th’barricade,” he adds as he saunters off into the bustle of police. The meditech moves away as well, focusing on someone else that needs care.

Genji watches Zenyatta. Reaches out. Zenyatta wraps his hand around Genji’s and squeezes, reassuring, before saying, “The assassin was familiar to you.”

“Yes,” Genji replies, because there is no point in lying in this. Pauses, and then adds, softly, soberly, “Had my family not disowned me – once, I wore red and black and bone white and smiled with a demon’s stiff face. Yes, I know that man.”

Zenyatta tips his head back, fixes his optics on him. Says, seriously, “I much prefer you in these colors.” Adds, “Go safely. Don’t lose yourself in the hunt. And do not be afraid to return, if you need shelter to rest.”

Genji bows his head. “Of course. Thank you. Stay out of trouble.”

“Let us keep our wishes realistic in this, now,” Zenyatta replies dryly, and Genji cannot help but laugh. “I will be looking forward to your return.”

Genji lets Zenyatta’s hand go.


	4. Chapter 4

The truth is that Genji had been a vigilante long before he had first donned the Green Sentai’s helm.

He had not done good. He had not been a hero. But he had the hunt and the skills that his family had taught him; and he had his prey in the form of the blood that had thought it acceptable to turn children into weapons of their will. He had his anger and his loneliness and the long nights and days spent relearning his new, hybrid existence, rehoning the edge he had been tempered to into a keen, hungry blade.

He had his sorrow. His mourning for a brother like him that he couldn’t save. He had the tangible memory of Hanzo’s unspoken love: the private trust fund filled with enough money for Genji to comfortably, quietly, live out the rest of his days.

The Shimada had thought Genji dead by his brother’s mercy – and he had been. To the family that he had been disowned from, he was nothing but a ghost. Something to be forgotten. Shimada Genji no more.

And, like a ghost, Genji had struck again and again from the shadows, disappearing like a specter after, as he had been trained to do. He had exacted his vengeance on what he had been born into, and his former family had fallen like grain before the scythe.

The police did not know the truth: that the once-sprawling empire that the Shimada had held had been sabotaged from both within and without. That what they had faced in their raids and due processes had been a shell of its former glory. That what they had dismantled was all that remained. The Shimada family had been afraid – afraid of what this lingering specter knew and how he knew it – and they had turned on themselves in their paranoia. When their claws had shed their own blood, the other sharks in the water had been driven into a frenzy.

The Shimada fell. For the love of a brother unable to kill another, the Shimada fell.

Genji hunts, because he _knows_ that demon’s smile that he had seen on the roof that day. Hunts, because it was the negative of his own – of the visage that he had worn in younger days, was a stiff face that belonged to a man that had walked away from Genji’s hospital bed with his shoulders steel-strong to hide how they had been shaking. Who had wept silent tears with his voice rock steady, as he had called Genji a fool and stripped him of his name.

Genji had never dared hope that Hanzo yet lived. With the damage that had been done to the family in the tumult that came from consolidating the loss of power, he had not expected Hanzo to be spared. But, perhaps, Hanzo had saved himself – clung on stubbornly to life and survived.

Or perhaps Genji was hunting nothing more than the phantom of a man long dead. Who could say.

The memories of those who deal in information, in secrets, are long. Genji’s contacts in this business yet survive, and, as he pays his social calls, he learns names attached to this new player: Azure Demon, Shimada’s Ghost, and murmurs of Talon, Talon, Talon that haunt the periphery, that cling to this man like cobwebs.

How far the Shimada have fallen, to consort so with an organization of radical new blood; the Shimada, that had cleaved so stubbornly to tradition even as they’d cleverly survived. This Talon has acquired a treasure, a relic of a now-lost age: one of the old family’s hunting demons to direct as they desired.

What is left of Genji’s familial pride burns in his gut at the idea of Hanzo brought so low – his righteous older brother, who had only wanted to honor their family name.

Talon will not meet with him. This specter of Shimada past is nowhere to be found. But Genji’s hunt is not entirely fruitless. He hears, instead, of something unusual up for auction. Something strange and too-brave that had done much to meddle in the affairs of others, that had earned enough ire to place a target upon its back. An omnic monk, captured at no little expense and effort from the very temple he resided at.

Genji wears old, familiar clothes. Genji wears an old, familiar face.

Genji goes hunting and it is an old, familiar thing as well.

He finds them in the suburbs. They are not prepared for a ghost of old Shimada might. Genji hunts them to ground and, after, kneels beside two silver suitcases in the stillness that has come to claim the picture-perfect house, hacks the lock on the first and then the second.

“I will not mourn you if you die a martyr,” he tells the contents softly. Zenyatta’s lights kindle barely brighter than a matchflame, roused from the dim pinpricks they had been in dormancy.

“Forgive… my presumptuousness,” Zenyatta thrums in reply, “But, I was right. You do… look better in green.”

“How are your power levels?” Genji asks. He does not say _do not die_.

“Nineteen percent,” Zenyatta returns. And, then, “Enough. Enough, now that you…” replying to Genji’s unvoiced words.

(“The omnic I saw in that between place, when I was chosen as your champion,” Genji had asked Zenyatta, once. They had been seated near the temple courtyard, and the soft bustle of petitioners, believers, and staff had been a comfortable background rustle.

Zenyatta had looked out at the people, silent for the space of a long breath, and then he had said, “I was a champion to him, before. His name was Tekhartha Mondatta. He was my brother.”)

Genji reaches into the foam insulation of the silver suitcase that Zenyatta lies in, disconnects wires from ports and pinches off tubing. He is as gentle as he can be around the empty sockets of Zenyatta’s shoulders, his hips, pushes aside the embarrassment he feels at seeing the other naked so for the first time like this. It is no time for that emotion. Later – later, after this, when he can be assured of Zenyatta’s safety, he will meditate upon what it means. For now –

For now, when Genji hefts Zenyatta’s weight into the cradle of an elbow and arm, Genji feels the mindless, consuming fury that had colored his past days a desperate red settle in his belly into a simple, smoldering rage.

(“My brother made enemies with his altruism,” Zenyatta had told him, once. “Ones that neither of us anticipated. I could not protect him. Yet the mantle of conduit went to me.

“There was nothing more we could have done to safeguard him against the unseen threat that killed him. I know this now, after all these years.”)

Zenyatta is lighter than he had expected. His steel must be honeycombed, like a bird’s, to reduce the weight. Genji lifts the silver case that holds Zenyatta’s orbs and arms and legs in his free hand. He is willing to give up the limb’s use. He does not expect resistance, after all.

“I did not kill them,” he tells Zenyatta softly as they leave.

Zenyatta sags against him, a noise of something like relief escaping his frame as a rush of static. “Thank you. For your restraint,” he tells Genji.

(“My brother acts as an anchor,” Zenyatta had said. “The mirror of me on the other side. We hold down a bridge of influence that the Iris may use to shape the world. In this, we still serve. Willingly so.”)

Genji turns his head briefly to the side. Touches the fangs and snarling visage of his mask to Zenyatta’s faceplate in quick contact. “Thank yourself for what you have done,” he murmurs in reply.

[They go home.](https://twitter.com/MotherMuchy/status/1197549282875736064?s=19)


	5. Chapter 5

The goons startle as a unit when Genji clears his throat behind them. When they slowly, apprehensively turn, Genji swallows his chuckle and throws off a two-fingered salute. “Evening, gentlemen,” he quips, tipping his head to one side. “We having some trouble here?”

There’s not a lot of room in this little alleyway. They are six men against one. Despite that, one of the goons squeaks out a nervous, “G-Green Sentai – no, nothing's going on, we just got a little lost is all,” as he hastily shoves a deactivating set of Tesla knuckles into his coat. The rest of the men are equally nervous – and just as bad at being surreptitious.

All of them except for one. Genji tilts his head back the other way and chirps out, “That’s great!” Then he moves – barely tensing – and that man at the edge of the group howls in fear as a shuriken pins his sleeve to the dingy brick, a modified taser clattering to the filthy concrete. Genji’s bubbly tone never falters. “Do you need directions? I see a lot of the city after all – and my memory is great!”

A messy chorus of terrified denials answers him. Genji grins behind his faceplate.

“Alright then, gentlemen – have a safe night,” he carols as he straightens, steps just far enough to the side to allow one man at a time back to the mouth of the alley. The little pack disperses, furtively and with no little amount of looking over their shoulders.

When the last of them have turned tail around the corner, Genji says, “Causing trouble again?”

“As always,” Zenyatta answers lightly. “My hero. Thank you for that timely rescue.”

Genji snorts rudely, turns and paces towards the figure standing relaxed and anticipatory near the dead end of the alley. “Hardly a rescue at all. Were you itching for a fight, troublemaker?”

Zenyatta tips his head back, his orbs spinning merrily about him, as Genji comes close enough to touch. He does not shy away when Genji reaches out, when Genji slides an arm across his shoulders and then crouches to tuck the other behind Zenyatta’s knees. He does not resist when Genji lifts him off his feet, only hums and laces his arms about Genji’s neck to hold on.

Genji skips off of one alley wall, rebounds to the other, and so clears the confines of the brick onto the rooftops of the city. Zenyatta is light in his arms.

“I wish you would be more careful,” Genji tells him as they move, just loud enough for the wind to not steal his words. Zenyatta’s back thrums against his bicep, shoulder, alive with the omnic’s electric pulse, his processes and mechanisms. “But it wouldn’t be you if you didn’t, I suppose.”

“It is in my nature,” Zenyatta answers peaceably. Then he adds, “But I shall place more care in my steps.” Then, after Genji has lept the length of several blocks, “Does it distress you, my champion? My nature?”

He does not say the words – but Genji hears them anyway. Does my nature distress you enough for you to leave? Is my nature something you wish you could change?

“Your daring was what intrigued me, when we first met,” Genji answers. “And your daring, your defiance, your stubborn, unyielding soul – all of them are a part of you. Aspects of a whole. Your compassion. Your resolve. All of these are why I have remained at your side for so long.

“I have had masters. I have known what it means to fight for another’s convictions. I am here of my own free will.”

He does not startle when Zenyatta cups his face, metal meeting the polymer of his helmet. Genji only holds him tighter.

(Genji remembers landing on Angela’s balcony. Remembers the way she had smiled at him, perfectly, brilliantly, falsely sweet. Remembers the little gun tucked at the small of her back. The scalpel up her sleeve.

“It’s me, Angela,” he had rasped, then smiled behind his stiff face when the doctor had inhaled sharply, years of military training and the tools she’d honed to sway the hearts of men falling away. She had scrambled to deactivate her security barrier to admit them, and Genji had murmured, ‘Pardon my intrusion,’ before slipping inside.

“I didn’t recognize you in that,” Angela tells him frankly as she closes the balcony door behind them. “Old history come back to life. Are you hurt?”

“No,” Genji replies. “But my friend is,” and as he watches Angela’s sharp, assessing eyes, he is reminded once again that she, like him, had grown up too-hard too-fast, forced to learn the ways of men to safeguard herself against those that had desired to use her. “Can you help?” he asks her, and her gaze snaps to his, merciless, hellfire blue.

“Yes,” she says.

“Will you?” Genji asks her, and that too-sharp gaze softens, because Genji makes no effort to hide the worry and desperation in his voice.

“Yes,” she says. Then, “Bring them here.”)

“Tracer wanted to meet with me,” Genji tells Zenyatta. The other makes a soft chirp of interest.

“She has information?”

“_May_ have information,” Genji corrects gently. He does not dare hope that one of the other masked crusaders in the city could have found something about his brother – but Tracer is a veteran of the rhythms of these streets, of this city, and has both a keen eye and old friends. Genji cannot dare to hope, but he does so despite himself, blood calling to blood, the dragon that slumbers in his bones seeking comrades long lost.

Zenyatta is silent in his arms. He knows of Genji’s long hunt, of the pursuit he refuses to set aside. And, Genji does not say, the last person to act as conduit for the Iris was slain for what he and his champion could not anticipate, being too good, too kind, to dabble in the darker affairs of pragmatic greed. Genji refuses to allow such a fate to befall them blindsided once more.

He still hunts. He listens for those foolish enough to ignore the threat inherent in a house full of neutralized, dangerous men who had fallen without catching a single glimpse of their assailant, a ghost that had struck and faded away, a haunting, warning echo of ancient might.

“The police still have no leads,” Zenyatta says, eventually. “The cases are, for all their intents and purposes, considered closed. The Shimada, after all, have been dealt with. Are no longer a threat.” His voice is mild in its dryness. “The detective is not pleased about it.”

“The detective’s heart is too big for his chest,” Genji returns. “And I, for one, would prefer it if the detective was gently removed from the premise before he gets himself hurt, again. He has been away from the gutter too long, made too good of a name for himself to be trying to find his old haunts again.”

“It was the Green Sentai who spared him more than the loss of some blood and bullets,” Zenyatta points out in return.

“The Green Sentai is only glad that he was able to _find_ the fool in time to spare him the loss of _another_ limb,” Genji replies.

Zenyatta makes a two-tone noise of agreement. “The Iris blesses us upon occasion.”

“Says the conduit that spoke with the Iris’ voice to give his champion directions.”

Zenyatta laughs.

The temple is not so far, now. [Zenyatta’s frame thrums in his arms](https://twitter.com/raadst/status/1197899740001779712), a live thing, and glorious for its presence. Genji alights on the roof, slides down the slope of the tile, and turns a neat flip before landing on his feet in the dirt of its private courtyard, this part of the complex designated solely for its staff and residents’ use. He kneels, and Zenyatta’s arms squeeze briefly tighter about his neck before they unwind.

“Thank you,” Zenyatta says, “for the armed escort home. And the rescue itself, of course.”

“You are welcome.” Genji looks up at the other, having yet to rise. “And thank you for indulging this foolish champion.”

“No thanks are needed for the boon of your concern over my safety,” Zenyatta replies. Then he pauses. Looks to the sky. “It has gotten late for our travels.”

“It has,” Genji says, then closes his teeth over what else he could say (that the Sentai kept long nights, that Shimada’s ghost kept sleepless ones, that the time was no trouble nor inconvenience for what he was and had chosen to do) for how Zenyatta is shifting his weight, the digits of each hand lacing with each other as his orbs dip uncertainly where they hang.

“And it would be rude of me to neglect the well-being of my champion when he has served so well. When his well-being and self are, too, dear to me.” Zenyatta looks down, and his optics meet Genji’s eyes behind the Green Sentai’s mask. “Would my champion indulge me in this? Genji… would you like to stay the night?”

Genji exhales all in a rush, sympathetic steam fogging the inside of his helmet and venting from his ribs as his heart leaps in his chest. He reaches up with hands that, miraculously, do not tremble, and he lifts the helm of champion from his head. When he smiles up at Zenyatta in answer, it is as himself, scars and silicon and all.

“It would be my pleasure,” Genji says, and he takes the hand that Zenyatta offers to pull himself to his feet.


	6. Chapter 6

He has been a fool.

The realization is not unfamiliar. Genji still remembers, after all, the days, months, years of disappointment that he had felt from his former family, as they’d sneered at their white sheep too naive of the ways of the world to conquer as he should.

He remembers. He is not the wastrel criminal prince from those days, but he still remembers; and he hopes that the recklessness that he had never truly shed will not be the end of him now. Genji flexes, twists against the binds that tie his hands above his head, and subsides when they do not give this time, either.

Nothing for it but to wait for a miracle. Genji laughs, and it smarts at his ribs, stings his blacked eye and the cuts on his face. He supposes he is lucky enough that only his helmet had shattered from the shot; polymer and Iris-protection had sundered under the caliber of a bullet aimed with the steady hand of a sniper. He’ll take the scars from the shrapnel if it means keeping his skull intact.

He hopes the miracle will be of his own making, but the feeling of growing serenity in his chest speaks true to his instincts: that he has reached the end of his rope here, bound hand and foot in some dark, deliberately-forgotten corner of a Vishkar R&D bunker.

It had been Jesse, in the end. Jesse and his stubborn determination, Jesse and his moments of uncanny luck, Jesse and his sharpshooter’s eye. He had responded on instinct to the faint sounds of a corporate burglary on his way home from a convenience store and caught the Azure Demon himself in the act.

The Demon – Genji’s brother – had been startled enough to be careless in his escape, hasty enough to leave a lead that Jesse had refused to relinquish, that he had followed to its logical end. He had harried Hanzo from target to target in a mutual game of cat and mouse that had had them both shouting obscenities and their grievances at each other as advantages were won and lost.

Genji had been kept somewhat abreast of each encounter (though Genji had had the feeling, as the months wore on, that certain details had been omitted for the sake of propriety); and Genji, with his knowledge of the Shimada empire and how it had been run and how he and Hanzo had once been directed, had taken the separate pieces of each target hit and assembled a greater whole.

Akande Ogundimu was a man of means, an indelible presence in impeccably tailored suits upon the financial landscape of the city. He had invested in Vishkar’s development of a corporate campus in the area, had multiple and varied connections, and Genji had been too careless in his observation of Vishkar engineer Satya Vaswani and had been blindsided by a bullet for his trouble.

The door to the testing bay hisses open; hundreds of kilos of concrete and reinforcement ponderously shift aside to admit a bespoke cut of navy and a slim purple shadow limned gold. Genji keeps his head down and does little more than breathe as Doomfist (a Talon name that had recently impressed itself upon the local criminal landscape for his brutal absorption of several minor families) crosses the floor to where to Genji hangs.

There is silence for several long moments. “The irony of the last of the Shimada line falling into Talon’s grasp,” Doomfist finally remarks. Genji can feel the weight of the other man’s scrutiny. It is a _heavy_, merciless thing. “You have my thanks. After all, the Shimada did not fall due to the… ability of the local authorities. You and I both know that. Were it not for your work, I would never have gained the purchase that I have in the wake of the family’s collapse.

“Your abilities are wasted in the role of a vigilante, as a presence disrespected and barely tolerated by the very populace you defend. I find this waste of talent… distasteful.”

“Is that an offer of employment?”

“If that is all you desire it to be. But both you and I know the strength that would swell Talon’s ranks if the doom of old Shimada sat as an equal among us. Your abilities are not in doubt; no fool could have done what you did, untraced, from the shadows then and now. You may even keep the monk if you would like. Your aegis over him has been well-established at this point, after all.”

Doomfist pauses. Genji carefully does not twitch.

“You could even finish the job. One last Shimada to whet the edge of your blade.”

Genji feels his blood run cold. “Oh?” he replies, and there must be something of that old, familiar mask in his face, because Doomfist chuckles, low.

“Your pursuit of the Azure Demon was dogged. Purposeful. Your inquiries noted.”

“He is under your employ.”

“He has yet to prove the reputation of his family. He cannot deal with _one_ nosy detective. He has not performed as satisfactorily as I would have expected of a former head – but perhaps that’s why the Shimada empire no longer exists. One Shimada for another… that would be a price I would be willing to pay.”

Genji inhales sharply, once. Holds the breath in his chest.

“You are much like the elders were,” he says softly, and then he lunges in what give his shackles allow him; the dragon that lives in his bones surges out from under his skin in a roar of viridian light that sets the bunker ablaze, her open maw and bared fangs pointed at the figure that had so callously offered family blood to be paid in exchange for Genji’s _loyalty_ –

Purple force, almost familiar, crushes his dragon’s mouth shut. Genji’s teeth click closed on nothing. His strangled scream of futile defiance matches his dragon’s thwarted roar as Doomfist takes one step forward to meet her interrupted charge, that wretched gauntlet unfolding, distorting the clean lines of his tailored suit, to backhand her out of the air.

Her form shatters into a thousand motes of green-white light. Doomfist and Genji stare each other down through their fall, as Genji breathes around the blood filling his mouth from his bitten tongue.

“Perhaps they should have taught their children better,” Doomfist finally says. “A pity. Moira? He’s yours.”

The door slides slowly closed behind him. The slim shadow that remains advances, and Genji snarls at her.

“Well, well,” Moira says, and she catches Genji’s chin in one hand carelessly. “A familiar face.”

“Back-alley butcher,” Genji spits, and doesn’t wince when her long nails dig in. “So you followed the money. Shimada gone and you take up with Talon.”

“Needs must. Who does the funding, where the money comes from…” She brushes the fingers of her other hand over Genji’s split eyebrow, rubs the pads of them together after, examines the blood on them; she shifts to peer at the juncture of Genji’s rebuilt jaw where it meets his cheekbone, looks into his exposed eye. “Details. I’d recognize _her_ work anywhere as well. How long has it been since I last saw our merciless little angel?”

Genji’s eyes spark, but Moira moves faster than he does, slams his head back to bounce off of the unforgivingly solid wall of the test bunker. Genji sees stars, sags in his bonds, stunned, and then chokes when force colored indigo wraps around his throat, pinning him back. It’s a noxious sensation, viscous against his skin even through his armor, and Genji nearly gags when his chewing doubts and foremost regrets suddenly surge to the forefront of his mind, borne on the wings of despair.

He _knows_ this power. Has faced off against it in friendly practice bouts hosted at the inner courtyard of a temple of faith, in matches meant to keep both of them sharp – Genji glares at the other and grits out through blue-green blood, “_How_.”

“Didn’t you wonder how _you_, of all people, were able to be ambushed? We both know how you work, and both know you’re not _that_ careless.” Moira leans in, reaches through the purple energy to pull the scarf from Genji’s throat, tosses it aside.

“Talon already had some edited chit before I was taken on, but she was early work, the result of lucky factors. Groundbreaking, for her time, but the mutagenics didn’t do much for her cognizance.” She finds a tear in Genji’s black undersuit and clinically begins widening it, tearing the material open to reveal more cybernetics, the joins of prosthetics and scarred skin. “She has the steadiest hands any sniper could hope for, and what’s left of her mind makes her as patient as a spider in its web. I suppose Talon must have taken her from somewhere, since she’s little better than a doll – a gun to be pointed in someone’s direction.”

Her nails score through a strap of a buckle. Genji’s left pauldron clatters to the concrete. “It’s funny, you know. That she’ll be the end of both master and follower of the Iris.”

Genji feels his heart stop in his chest. “_What?_” he croaks, and Moira pauses as well, tips her head to look Genji in the eye.

“Oh, you _didn’t_ know. Did your little omnic not tell you? His master was killed by a _sniper_, who brought some of her kill home as evidence of her success. And now, that same widowmaker has done it to you – downed you and trussed you up tidy and neat for _me_.”

Genji’s gaze flicks from the purple energy holding him pinned to the apparatus of Moira’s suit, eyes lingering on the indigo and gold tubing. “And _you_ –” he starts, and the words come out of his mouth too-deep and grating, snapping off his bleeding tongue like lightning grounding. Moira’s mismatched eyes blaze with triumph.

“The energy of the Iris shaped its vessel to its needs,” she purrs, and there is an unholy fervor in her voice. “It’s transformative – mutagenic – restorative – it’s _exactly_ what I’ve been searching for, and to think it lay in the trophies kept by someone’s _failure_ all these years – !” She leans in, and Genji has no room to move away. “And _you_. Shimada’s dead, and yet here you are, touched by the same force and using it as your own – the samples from that omnic were barely enough to develop my current research, and now I have you _here_, living and breathing – ”

Genji’s dragon surges underneath his skin, and suddenly the force around his neck is trebled and his vision is going grey around the edges, warning messages scrolling across his peripherals; the grey tunnels; and Moira tells him, “But you don’t have to be alive to still be of use. It would just be better. So, for the sake of the progress of humanity… _behave_.”

Genji thinks he spits, “Fuck you,” but he cannot hear himself over the ringing in his ears and the blinding pain of his throat. The serenity in his belly tells him he will die here, one day or another, a long-delayed cessation as borrowed time comes to an end.

He does not regret his life, now. Not after meeting Zenyatta. Not after seeing the change that he could evoke. Not after learning, in the wake of the rage that had colored his days red, that his Shimada blood hadn’t doomed him to a fate of solely destruction.

His heart is at peace.

The ground shudders.

Suddenly the force at his throat is gone, and Genji reflexively sucks in a lungful of air, wheezes and tries to not choke as the darkness of unconsciousness recedes. There is light in the bunker, and Genji hears Moira snarl, “_You?_” an instant before there is the report of energy meeting energy and a flare of brightness in the room. Genji shakes his head to clear it, lifts it as Moira yells, “Where are the _guards_,” and then tenses fullbodied as a familiar voice full of unfamiliar echoes answers, resonant:

“They were in my way.”

Genji looks up. His eyes meet a familiar three by three array blazing celestial gold, set in an unfamiliar, featureless black faceplate. The omnic wears diaphanous robes gilt gold that billow over the solid juts of armor plating; he hums with a palpable energy that makes the hair on Genji’s arm stand on end; and the vermilion light that both crowns and bisects his cranial unit matches the six discs that float, flank him, black metal arms blossoming from each like macabre mechanical branches.

Moira follows her shot of modified discord with a beam that twists and reaches like a live thing, and Genji watches as it’s parried away once, twice, three times by ethereal passes of those disembodied arms, palms glowing Iris gold. The omnic advances with each movement, utterly silent save for the reports of their clash for how he floats above the concrete of the bunker, and the lack of sound only lends weight to the _menace _writ large in the angles of his armoring. Moira hisses, bares her teeth, and eventually, inevitably, in the face of that relentless advance, breaks.

She fades from sight into indigo vapor that is instantly lost to the remaining gloom of the battlefield, and soon there’s hardly any distance at all between Genji and his rescuer.

“Zenyatta,” he says, and is surprised by how weak it comes out, all rasp and ragged edges.

The omnic reaches out. Genji closes his eyes as metal hands come to cradle his face, as the resonance of peace comes to settle warm over him, enveloping, welcoming gold. “Oh, my champion,” Zenyatta murmurs, and his words pop static once, his voice breaking, when he says, “I will not forgive you if you die, my lionheart.”

He does not say _don’t leave me like this_.

Genji smiles, because he hears it anyway, lets his numb arms flop loose around the other’s shoulders when they’re freed from their restraints. Sleep takes him as Zenyatta bears him from the depths of Vishkar, a most divine palanquin for a weary hero come home, and Genji lets the burden of his breathing weight be his answer.


	7. Chapter 7

“He’s gotten better at skulking since the last time I saw him in the field, Before,” Genji remarks. “No, don’t look at him. You’ll scare him off.”

“Your brother is not some stray cat to be adopted onto the temple mousing team, Genji,” Zenyatta reprimands lightly, though Genji can hear the laughter bubbling just below his words.

“What’s one more cat added to the caboodle?” he counters lightly.

“To the clowder? And I’m certain such veterans as Lieutenant 76 would object to Overwatch being compared to such a collective.”

“Lieutenant 76 is too much the poster boy to see how much his meetings are like herding cats,” Genji replies, then revels in the little, undignified snort that gets from Zenyatta.

“So says the vigilante that now has multiple indie merchandise lines of him.”

“Call them what they are, Master: bootleg. _Multiple_ shitty anime bootlegs,” and Zenyatta does laugh outright at that, the sunlight in the courtyard gleaming off of his beaten, grey faceplate in his mirth.

(“Once, I was a champion, too,” Zenyatta had told him from the safety of the enveloping night, from the shelter that Genji’s bedside had offered. “Once, I wore red and black and white like you. When I became conduit…”

He had fallen silent. Genji had not told him that he had been beautiful in his bloodthirst. That his ferocity had shattered the serenity in his belly and replaced it with flame. That his greed had called to Genji’s hunger, the starving ghost of unburied Shimada that yet haunted his veins.

In that velvet night, Genji had, instead, opened the covers of his sickbed wide. Had let Zenyatta fold himself up as small as he could, pressed carefully against his side, inhumanly thin and hard and thrumming with the electricity that gave his frame life. Zenyatta had hidden his optics against Genji’s pillow.

“I had made my peace with my failure,” he had said into the sheets. “But, since then, I had never – it is not something that can be forced upon the unwilling. It is a gift. And ever since the day my brother died, it was one that I had not desired.”

Genji had remembered a cafe with flowerpots in the windows and a conversation shared a lifetime ago. He had rolled himself enough to tangle fingers gently into the wires at the base of Zenyatta’s neck. Zenyatta’s shoulders had shaken, and they had not stilled as he had said to Genji desperately, angrily, overwrought, “Yet when you did not return from patrol that night – for the first time in a very long time, I _wanted_ to be the dreadnought I had been built as once more,” spitting the words through static.

“And the power of champion was _there._ It _remembered_. It was a gift that had never been withdrawn.

“I took up my guns. I took up my arms. And the Iris rang with mortar fire and battlesong for what I had done.

“I did not care. I only wanted you.”

Genji had found one of Zenyatta’s hands. Had, as gently as he could, opened finger from palm, and Zenyatta had let him, had let him place it against Genji’s chest, lay it over his heart. “You did good,” Genji had told him. “You did good. You saved me. I am here.”

The way Zenyatta had grasped at him then had reminded Genji of the way Hanzo’s steel-strong shoulders had broken when Zenyatta and Genji had returned to the temple. For all his gratitude, for saving Genji from Vishkar, there had been grief, too, in the way he had buried his face in his hands as he’d wept.)

“Certainly the meetings are, in many ways, Symmetra’s bane,” Zenyatta admits, later. Genji thinks of the way she and Jesse had clashed upon their first meeting and agrees.

“She is stubborn enough, at least. If Commander Amari does go through with taking her under her wing, very little will be able to stand in their way.” There is a thoughtful pause. Then, Genji adds, “I’m glad she feels comfortable enough with Ana now to not reject her offer outright.”

Satya’s back had been so straight as she’d sat on the edge of the metal chair in her interrogation room, regal even in prison orange. Vishkar, and Doomfist’s, hold on the city had weakened for the plea deal she had taken, protection in exchange for information about the many, many things Vishkar made and tested and broke in their deepest bunkers.

(“I had thought that I could bring peace through order,” she had said, and her dark eyes had bored through the Green Sentai’s helm even as she had been a thousand miles away, her gaze piercing even as she had looked through him. “I had thought that I could banish the darkness. That I – ”

Her left hand had curled into a fist on the metal table. The polymer of her fingers had clicked against the hard surface. “And instead I was used. Expected to keep quiet. To turn a blind eye, to believe that they were incapable of doing wrong. That their ends justified the means, the deemed-necessary sacrifices.”

She had taken a breath. Her hand had opened.

“I was a fool,” she had said. “A naive fool to believe…”

Genji had watched her, so near and yet so far away, and felt his chest ache in remembered sympathy. “It’s easier to not hope. To not strive,” he’d said and not moved when her eyes had snapped to his even through the helm. “It’s easier to believe that this – Vishkar and its ilk, what it’s done, what it felt justified in doing – is the way of the world. That there is nothing _to_ be done. That there is always injustice and injury to those who do not deserve it. That only the ruthless survive.

“Yet what is revolution save for belief put to action? Against the bounds that the powerful impose?” Genji had glanced to the side as Jesse had rapped at the door to the interrogation room, nodded at the one-way glass of the wall. Satya, watching him, had sneered.

“Pretty words from a man dressed as a clown,” she had replied.

“Yet I was the fool you sought, yes? When you discovered the depths of Vishkar,” Genji had countered. He had straightened, standing to leave. “I have heard that hard light needs innovative, clever people to utilize its full potential. That it does its best work in the hands of practical dreamers. What better people to build a bridge to a kinder future?”

He had left. Satya, silent, had kept her eyes on him the entire while, until the door had shut behind him.)

“I hope he decides whether or not he’s going to talk to me soon,” Genji complains. Zenyatta, at his back, chirps inquiringly. Genji feels the planes of his false shoulder blades move against his spine as the other doesn’t pause in his work.

“Hanzo?” he asks. Genji grunts. Zenyatta continues with, “He will or he will not in his own time. And not before it suits him to do so. You did call him a cat, after all.”

“I _compared_ him to a cat,” Genji corrects. “I can wait. It’s getting spooked at random times of the day by the feeling that someone’s watching that’s starting to grate on my nerves.”

“It’s a pity you can’t turn off your awesome ninja cyborg reflexes when you need to.”

“None of my sentai shows ever talked about this.”

(“You got lucky,” Angela had told him bluntly the next time she caught him conscious. “You’re going to run out of lives at this rate, though,” she had added, and Genji had managed a small laugh.

“Guess I’ll live, doc?” he’d quipped. In reply, Angela had calmly picked up the flat pillow next to her on the floor and leaned over to start gently smothering Genji.

“But you truly were lucky,” she had said, later.

Genji, staring up at the wooden beams of the temple room that had, somehow, become his own, had been silent for the span of an assisted breath before he’d replied, “I know.”

“If they had wanted you dead – ”

“But they did not want me dead. Likely they will not for some while yet, not until Moira has had a proper chance to take me apart, or until I become so great of a thorn in their side that even Doomfist himself would be willing to kill me on sight.”

The silence that had fallen then had been punctuated only by the soft, pneumatic hisses and clicks of the maintenance machines Genji had been hooked to, machines to cleanse his artificial blood, machines to replace the nanites that he had lost, machines to help him breathe, machines to dull the edges of the familiar pain and discomfort as his patchwork, disjointed body healed.

“You need to be careful, too,” Genji had said. “She remembers. Angela. She recognized your work.”

There had been a long pause as his words had settled. Then Angela had replied, “… Sometimes I wish I really had died when our Overwatch fell,” and it had only been Genji’s long years of distant friendship with Angela that had let him hear the blinding, bitter anger underneath the calm veneer of her tone. “Will the world never let me forget what my hubris wrought? Was it so much to ask of it to be allowed to simply live in peace?”

Genji had stared at the wooden beams of the ceiling in the temple room that had, somehow, become his own, and blinked slowly through the familiar pain in his limbs and chest and heart. “It’s almost enough, sometimes,” Angela had said mildly, conversationally, “to make me think that she had the right idea. About all the cruel, unnecessary bounds placed upon humankind, on our existence. Why should I not want to rebel against the society that operates by such venial, base standards that it takes such joy in hounding the me that I am now with the selfish, blind child of who I had been? What is there to salvage in this rotten carcass of the world?”

Genji had stared at the ceiling. Angela had taken one deep breath. “You are more than the you of then,” he had said, and Angela’s voice had cracked as she had replied, “Am I?” Her laugh had been sharp, short. “Says the man hooked up to five different monitors right now, under observation.”

“You saved my life with what you did.”

“Are you _thankful_ for it? For what I did to you?”

“Yes.”

Angela had fallen silent. Genji had turned his head towards her and seen the flat blankness of the old, familiar face she yet wore out of habit. He had ached with it for how it had reminded him of what he and Hanzo had lost by being raised too-hard too-fast, thrust into a world hungry to use them far, far too early.

“If you had asked me three, four, more, years ago,” he had said, honestly, “I would not have been able to say ‘Yes’ with such force. But I am not the Genji of then.

“It is not fair what happened to me. To us. It is not fair what we learned to do, to survive. You remember. How angry I was? All these years spent afraid that I would never be more than a son of Shimada, that I had been broken permanently by what I’d had to do, had done, had thought was right.

“I wish that I did not have to make peace with who I was, with the blood on my hands. But the me that I am now would not be able to say ‘thank you’ for salvaging the wreck of my body if I hadn’t. Would not be here to be thankful if you had not done it.”

Genji had looked at Angela and said, “Thank you. Thank you for your work. Thank you for your care. Thank you for the youthful hubris that allowed you to develop your nanites, the triumph that saved my life.”

His voice had softened. “Thank you for being here. Thank you for being worried. Your kind heart doesn’t deserve to live as a shadow of itself because you’re afraid of what you could do. You are not the Angela of then, and Moira is not a spirit of vengeance come to torment you for your past sins.”

Angela had closed her eyes. Genji had heard the sound of that flat mask shattering.

“I don’t believe you,” she had said.

“I didn’t expect you to,” Genji had replied. “I still hope you’ll be careful.”

“I’m glad you’re alive,” Angela had said, and then, later, before she had left, “It feels impossible to hope for.”

“I didn’t believe him either, when he said it to me,” Genji had told her. “But it’s true. Come visit again.”

“… I will.”)

“It feels good to be back in the mask again,” Genji remarks as he slides off his helm. He shakes his head and sweat flies off the tips of his damp hair, spikes it from momentum. He bends willingly enough when Zenyatta reaches out, lets the other thread fingers through it to push it back. “Got plenty of exposure, too? Thought I heard camera snaps on my rounds.”

“More than enough for our purposes,” Zenyatta answers. “Social media has been buzzing with word that the Green Sentai is back out on patrol.”

“I hope they caught my good side.”

“All of your sides are good, Genji,” Zenyatta starts with the fond, long-suffering air of someone retreading old ground. “Not just the ones that capture your rear.”

“The public loves my ass, Zenyatta.”

“Said ass is _going_ to become a target if you keep posing for cheesecake glamor shots, Genji.”

“Don’t fret too much, though. I was in good company.”

“Nothing a camera would catch?”

Genji scoffs even as he skins out of his patrol clothes. “Please. Give us a little more credit.” He takes a moment to check his still-healing wounds, notes his own exertions and energy levels. Behind him, Zenyatta is silent, content to wait as Genji collects his thoughts.

“It was… good. Different. Very different in many ways to what we used to do,” Genji adds, eventually, then turns to face Zenyatta. “But the same in a lot of others. We fell back into step with each other like we’d never spent all those years apart,” and there is pain in Genji’s voice, but it is a hurt born as much from sorrow as bloodshed. He doesn’t bother to hide it from Zenyatta. What would be the point? He has already laid himself bare, naked to the very pith of him, for the other.

“Will you do it again?” Zenyatta asks, steps willingly closer when Genji opens his arms to him. He settles easily when Genji embraces him. Genji closes his eyes and breathes in the scent of incense and warm metal, machine oil and temple dust.

“Not the next patrol,” he answers honestly. “Too many echoes were stirred just from tonight’s short jaunt. But the next time, yes. My brother and I will stalk the streets as each other’s shadows once again.”

(“It’s quaint,” Hanzo had said as he’d dropped into the empty seat across from Genji, the legs of the metal patio chair somehow failing to screech on the concrete. He hadn’t looked at him, had perched on the very edge of his seat, and Genji had looked up from his phone to study the way Hanzo’s jaw had been clenched.

“It is,” he’d said, eventually, and then, “Would you like to order?” flagging down Paula from inside without getting up, leaning back in his chair instead. He’d been silent as Hanzo had murmured thanks to her for the laminated menu she’d passed him, had taken in the sight of his brother after all these years through eyes unblurred by pain or exhaustion or rage. Hanzo had lost weight. Replaced it with thick muscle that had built the unrelenting line of his shoulders even broader.

“It’s not your usual sort of place,” Hanzo had said, then visibly bitten his tongue.

“It’s been years since I’ve been that kind of wastrel,” Genji had responded, gentle despite the barb, then said, “Here,” to soften the sting. He had lifted Parsnip, limp and purring, out of his lap and onto the table, holding her under her arms as he’d presented Hanzo for her to examine. When she’d wriggled to be put down, interest piqued, he’d let her go, and not bothered to hide his smile as she’d demanded attention from his brother.

He’d let Hanzo distract himself. Had let Hanzo order. Had said, after the barista had left, “It’s good to see you again,” and let the honest emotions in his words show, still raw despite all the years. “I’d thought you dead in the family’s downfall.”

Hanzo had gone entirely still. Gently, Genji had continued with, “And I cannot thank you enough for your help in accessing Vishkar. You and Satya – you saved my life.”

“Should this truly be something you _thank_ me for?” Hanzo had spat back, as quick as a snake and just as venomous. “After all that I had done? To you and others?”

“Am I any more innocent for what I did after you let me live?” Genji had countered.

“They were cruel to demand it.”

“And I paid their cruelty back tenfold.”

They had both broken off as Paula had reappeared with Hanzo’s order. Hanzo had been unable to meet Genji’s eyes after his outburst, had stared at some far point with his chin raised and one hand buried in Parsnip’s fur, the cat draped over shoulders set steel-strong and unyielding.

“You… have changed,” Hanzo had said eventually, and then something in his old, familiar face had slumped, diminished. His shoulders had dropped. He had aged years in a breath. “But that is only to be expected. After all this time. I have missed so much.”

“I missed you,” Genji had told him, and he had smiled when Hanzo’s gaze had snapped to his, sincere in the face of the disbelief writ large across his brother’s features. He had reached out across the table with an open hand, and waited, expectant; and Hanzo’s eyes had dropped from Genji’s face to his upturned palm and back again. “It has been long enough. And we are both here now.

“I forgive you.”

“How can you say such things so _easily_,” Hanzo had retorted, near-snarling with it. Genji had shrugged and not withdrawn his hand.

“I found myself. The me that Shimada tried to train away, the me before the vengeance and the bloodfeud. We will never get those years back that were lost to us,” Genji had said, “but we are here now, and I have the hope and the proof that these bloodied hands can do more than destroy. I have the hope and the proof that we can do more, _be_ more, than lingering hunting ghosts.”

Hanzo had sat too-still. “I do not believe you,” he had said.

Genji had smiled. “I didn’t either, for a very long time,” he had replied, then wiggled his fingers where they lay on the mesh tabletop. “So? Shall we?”

Hanzo had closed his eyes. Lingered too still for a long moment before he had pressed his lips together. Had taken a sharp, inhaled breath he had held in his chest. Braced for a blind leap of faith, as he’d put his hand in Genji’s own, as he’d squeezed tight enough to grind Genji’s remaining bones together in his too-desperate grip.

The pain had felt like an exchange. A price paid to seal a promise. Genji had gripped back just as hard and grinned broad through his tears.)

“His work with Jesse will do him good,” Genji remarks to Zenyatta as he soaks in the bath. Zenyatta makes a two-tone noise of agreement in reply.

“They do fine work with each other.”

“And it will steady Hanzo, to have something to work towards. Jesse is too stubborn to quit, and Doomfist has made this personal with the Sentai’s capture.”

“Doomfist made things personal for much of the city when he captured the Green Sentai,” Zenyatta remarks too lightly. Genji looks up at where the other is perched on the rim of the tub and then reaches out to lay one hand on the length of Zenyatta’s thigh close to the hip. Lets it rest there, unspoken reassurance, as Zenyatta exhales air he does not need, collecting himself. He lays his hand atop Genji’s after a few seconds, and Genji doesn’t say anything more, just relishes the humid quiet before he rises.

Genji has, for now, abandoned the temple room that had somehow become his. His things, instead, have made their way one by one to the space Zenyatta uses as one of the head priests of the temple, have slowly come to live alongside ceremonial robes, omnic repair kits, mementos and holiday cards sent from people whom Zenyatta had helped, touched, connected with. Zenyatta’s pile of cushions has become a futon nest framed by a charging station and Genji’s nanite housing tower. Spare orbs sit nestled between the straight lines of Genji’s swords, the case that holds his shuriken-loaded prosthetic arm.

Genji stands in the doorway, his duffle slung over his shoulder, and watches, arrested, as Zenyatta picks his way across the room to their bed, the omnic’s optics already fixed upon the letter from a distant friend that he’d had to abandon that morning underneath Genji’s insistent attentions. It takes him several seconds to realize that Genji has not followed him in, and he turns, paper in hand, to tilt his head at the other.

“Genji?” he asks, and Genji can do nothing but shake his head, step fully into their room to slide the door shut behind him. He fishes his helmet from his bag.

“Thank you for the save,” Genji says as he straightens, the Green Sentai’s mask held in his hands. It’s more than simple thanks for a rescue. Covers days, weeks, years, a lifetime found again, even more, unspoken.

Zenyatta’s gaze goes up from the helmet. Meets Genji’s eyes. He sets his letter aside. Moves to where Genji stands, yet steaming from the bath, and reaches out to cup hands first about the once-shattered mask in Genji’s hands and then against Genji’s face itself.

“The sentiment,” he replies, “is mutual. Thank you. My hero. My champion. My lionheart.”

“My hope,” Genji breathes in answer.

The Green Sentai’s helm finds its place beside Genji’s blades.

Genji finds his place at Zenyatta’s side.


End file.
